Star Trek Star Trek Picard Discussion Thread

D

Deleted member 88

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Which is retarded. In every conceivable way.

Picard is an idealist and he gets away with a lot, he is definitely not naive or foolish.
 

Shipmaster Sane

You have been weighed
The idea of the Federation star ship looking on as some primitive civilization dying as they scream for help on radio has some basis in canon-the episode with Worf's brother for one. And Pen Pals.

As well as the pre PD Dear Doctor.

As it is-the idea is that for one the Federation can't save everybody, and secondly to save them means to become involved in assisting and uplifting them. Can the Federation redirect an asteroid about to hit a stone age culture? Probably. Then again, in canon there seems to be some belief in a teleology of destiny-if the will of the cosmos or evolution is for a species to perish then so be it.

Now this is pretty cold and perhaps even offensive to some people. But it is an idea I can see existing in Federation civilization as it is described.

And personally I like the values dissonance, the Federation isn't superman. And it doesn't want to be.
They did save the pen pals though.


Picard is privileged, though.

He gave Starfleet an ultimatum, stormed off to sulk when he didn’t get his way, dropped the ball on a lot of people, and got to sit at home at his chateau sipping red wine while things went to hell.

Picard’s moral dudgeon was much more fashionable in the 2360s than 2399. For most of his travels, he flat out does not get how the world now works, and just how out of place he is in it.
Picard's morality is the only reason the Q havent vaporized all of humanity all the way back through history into a pool of slime like the end of that shitty anime.

This is how the world works in Star Trek: Sometimes magical nonsense happens, and if you don't consistently behave in keeping with a ridiculously high spiritual and moral standard, a god dickslaps half your galaxy into infinitely small pieces.

Thats how the world works.
 
D

Deleted member 88

Guest
Also apparently Klingons are “marginalized”. According to the article.

Despite having a powerful interstellar empire and their own interests and agency and actually conquer and used to enslave other species

If I have to hazard a guess-it’s because...they don’t look white.

Androids also aren’t “marginalized” given there really aren’t that many of them to start with. Data is a culture of “one” not a member of some second class ethnic group.

it’s clear the article is seeing Trek through a 21st century social justice lens. When said lens really does not fit either the setting or ethos.

The amazingly insightful woman who wrote this trash.

 
D

Deleted member 88

Guest
I mean in the broader sense it’s to denigrate and pervert culture and is another move in the course to destroy civilization itself.

Destroying male protagonists and cultural productions which emphasize virtue and good ideas-are being attacked.

These people don’t care about the fandom or even if they lose money. It’s all about their political objectives and nothing else.

They see themselves as waging a total war for society. Cultural production is one such front of the war.
 

Lanmandragon

Well-known member
Also apparently Klingons are “marginalized”. According to the article.

Despite having a powerful interstellar empire and their own interests and agency and actually conquer and used to enslave other species

If I have to hazard a guess-it’s because...they don’t look white.

Androids also aren’t “marginalized” given there really aren’t that many of them to start with. Data is a culture of “one” not a member of some second class ethnic group.

it’s clear the article is seeing Trek through a 21st century social justice lens. When said lens really does not fit either the setting or ethos.

The amazingly insightful woman who wrote this trash.

I saw literally non of what she's saying. I think you guys are reading into this to much I really do. Picard's a good and entertaining show it's that simple.
 

Shipmaster Sane

You have been weighed
DS9 introduced darkness into the Federation but Picard's purpose is to denigrate Picard. Not the exact same thing.
Thank god he diddnt come within a thousand miles of saying they were the same thing, then.


I saw literally non of what she's saying. I think you guys are reading into this to much I really do. Picard's a good and entertaining show it's that simple.
Leaving aside what everyone should consider unforgivable violations of the stories it bases itself on, the writing is bumblefuck clumsy, the acting is so deeply hollow I can hear an echo, the plot is lazy, and the fights are uninteresting matrix rips. It's a bad show on it's own, without the star trek moniker, and it's an especially shitty star trek show.
 
D

Deleted member 88

Guest
DS9 didn't denigrate the idea of merit or the idea of a better future.

In fact-the idea of unearned merit is brought up with Bashir who is genetically enhanced, "nobody questions success" he tells O'Brien. Today that would be out of date. The same episode-you are left with the possible impression that while what Julian's parents did was illegal, it might not have been wrong. Now, the idea of a slow or mentally handicapped child getting intellectual enhancement would be seen as awful, privileged, and anti neurodivergent or something.

All DS9 did was say-"the federation is utopian-outside and on the frontier it is not".

Picard in the vein of today's Zeitgeist dismisses the idea of a future based on merit and actual like utopia entirely.
 

Lanmandragon

Well-known member
Thank god he diddnt come within a thousand miles of saying they were the same thing, then.



Leaving aside what everyone should consider unforgivable violations of the stories it bases itself on, the writing is bumblefuck clumsy, the acting is so deeply hollow I can hear an echo, the plot is lazy, and the fights are uninteresting matrix rips. It's a bad show on it's own, without the star trek moniker, and it's an especially shitty star trek show.
Opionon,oppionon, then yet another opionon. Damn not an objective fact in sight. Guess what ship opionons mean litteraly nothing. That's why "film critic" isn't a real job but whatever you do you.
 
D

Deleted member 88

Guest
So, I have heard others say that the show says that Romulans are bad cause they are against Synthetics cause they are upto no good and yet the show does show that the Romulans were actually correct about that.

What is this show trying to teach?

Challenging or disliking someone who will kill you makes you a bigot and thus you should do nothing?
Somehow that sounds like a bongo message. Like in every way.
 

Shipmaster Sane

You have been weighed
Opionon,oppionon, then yet another opionon. Damn not an objective fact in sight. Guess what ship opionons mean litteraly nothing. That's why "film critic" isn't a real job but whatever you do you.
"Theres no such thing as bad acting Mario!"
You'd sound more convincing if you could speak english.
 

Darth Robbhi

Protector of AA Cruisers, Nemesis of Toasters
Super Moderator
Staff Member
So, I have heard others say that the show says that Romulans are bad cause they are against Synthetics cause they are upto no good and yet the show does show that the Romulans were actually correct about that.

What is this show trying to teach?

Challenging or disliking someone who will kill you makes you a bigot and thus you should do nothing?
How much of that was the Romulans bringing it upon themselves?

Tell someone you’re going to kill them and killing a lot of their fellows is a good way to get them to bring in allies.

We don’t know if the Romulans were correct or not, because we don’t know what the advanced synthetic beings would do. We only have the Romulan and Synth beliefs that synthetic and organic (or rather silicon and carbon based life) cannot coexist peacefully.

And that may well be a self-fulfilling prophecy.
 

Battlegrinder

Someday we will win, no matter what it takes.
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Obozny
The Humbling of Admiral Picard
On Star Trek: Picard our beloved admiral is forced to reckon with his privilege as a Starfleet officer from a planetary superpower.

They hate you and they hate your franchises and they hate heroes.

On the one hand, that looks a lot like a writer with an agenda reading their politics into the script, with a healthy dose of not knowing what they're talking about, rather than something insightful about the show (because the only thing Picard demonstrates that most sci-fi writers are lazy hacks chasing after BSG's ratings). For example, there's a bunch of crap in ST that "literally breaks organic brains", like a species that drives people insane if you look at them. Given there is precedent for that or for similar things that screw up everyone bar one particular race or even certain people, it is an absurd leap of logic to conclude that this one is a totally different thing and that it must be for a race of super powerful space robots, since such races do not exist in ST (outside of TMP, which I think we're all better off pretending doesn't exist).


One the other hand, it raises serious questions that ST.com decided to publish this. Though I suppose it could be damage control, with them trying to go "no, no, we're not trying to be super dark and edgy because we're a bunch of hacks chasing after BSG's success, it's about....uh....privilege, yeah, that's big thing to be woke about these days, right?".


This is how the world works in Star Trek: Sometimes magical nonsense happens, and if you don't consistently behave in keeping with a ridiculously high spiritual and moral standard, a god dickslaps half your galaxy into infinitely small pieces.

Thats how the world works.

So explain the borg, the klingons, the dominion, etc, still exist. As far as I can tell, the kind of thing you're talking about has happened exactly once in the history of the series, in "The Survivors" and they guy who did it went against everything his race typical stood for and was so horrified he vowed to never do anything like that again.
 

Darth Robbhi

Protector of AA Cruisers, Nemesis of Toasters
Super Moderator
Staff Member
They did save the pen pals though.



Picard's morality is the only reason the Q havent vaporized all of humanity all the way back through history into a pool of slime like the end of that shitty anime.

This is how the world works in Star Trek: Sometimes magical nonsense happens, and if you don't consistently behave in keeping with a ridiculously high spiritual and moral standard, a god dickslaps half your galaxy into infinitely small pieces.

Thats how the world works.
It’s not Picard’s morality that Q is looking for. It’s Picard’s ability to grow mentally and think non-linearly. That’s why Q breaks the rules and gives Picard the big hint, taking him back in time to show the anomaly works backwards in time, and is bigger in the past. In that moment, you see Q shift from judge to advocate, or perhaps even mentor, giving Picard the clues to work out the puzzle when Picard ain’t getting it.
 

bullethead

Part-time fanfic writer
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First of all, claiming that the Klingons as a species are marginalized is fucking stupid when they control an interstellar empire and conquer the shit out of planets. Literally the only Klingon character who can claim to be marginalized in the TNG+ era is Worf, and that's because he got exiled from his own damn people's society twice for political bullshit. The Federation sure as fuck hasn't marginalized him and if he does show up in Picard S2, I wouldn't be surprised if he was commanding the Enterprise as per the prequel novel.

Second, Picard is privileged as fuck. Throughout the run of TNG and the TNG movies, he's gotten to dictate Federation foreign policy to a ridiculous degree, while being a huge ass hypocrite and doing more to help non-Federation citizens than actual Federation citizens. It's so fucking blatant that both Red Letter Media and SFDebris talk about his absurd flip-flop from obeying orders to relocate Indians due to a peace treaty with the Cardassians (who tortured him and already violated a previous treaty) and disobeying orders to help the Ba'ku.

He got used to being able to make the Federation his bitch with speeches heavy on moral rhetoric and not cold, pragmatic reasoning, and when his approach failed, he walked the fuck out because "pragmatism and competence equals evilthe Federation abandoning its principles," even though the Federation has committed far more egregious violations of its principles in the past. His moral absolutist stance fucked over tons of people, while he sat on his vineyard and sulked over how, in the wake of a war that fucked up a big part of the quadrant and required rebuilding parts of the Federation and the whole Cardassian Union, the Federation has zero reason to bend to his whims in order to save a race and government that has tried to fuck them over several times in the past twenty years.
 

Battlegrinder

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Obozny
Second, Picard is privileged as fuck.

I find it interesting that the article didn't really examine that (presumably because talking about how relatively minor figures can dictate policy to society at large would be a bit uncomfortably close to home). It touches on it:

Not being relevant is the ultimate slap in the face for high-profile people used to calling the shots. Picard is visibly bothered when a Starfleet receptionist asks for his name when he arrives for his meeting with Admiral Clancy. She, too, takes him down a peg, calling out his “sheer, fucking hubris” for even showing up with a request for reassignment, calling his Tal Shiar conspiracy theory, “the delusions of a once-great man desperate to matter.”

But that doesn't really align with what you're talking about, at not as I read it (also, I imagine eventually getting to go "I told you so" about romulan conspiracies takes a lot of the sting out of that rejection).


Also, I missed this bit the first time around, and it's hilarious:

If Picard materializing on Vashti bedecked in classic colonizer garb isn’t a harbinger of poor choices and broken promises to come, I don’t know what is.

I'm not so sure what's makes this a "colonizer" outfit, other than it's white? It kinda looks like that outfit he wore to Risa back in the series proper. Is this like that thing with the first lady visiting africa a few years back and some idiots on twitter freaked out because she wore a pith helmet on a safari trip or something?

Like misguided international aid groups of late 20th-century Earth, Picard and the Federation were guilty of having “no understanding of [the] ingenuity, resolve, and self-sufficiency,” of the people they were trying to save, says former senator, Tenqem Adrev.

I think the federation had a pretty good grasp of that, actually, since we have several billion rolumans that can testify to the effective of romulan ingenuity, resolve, and self-sufficiency managed on it's own. Or we would, if the lack of those qualities hadn't gotten them all vaporized.
 

Husky_Khan

The Dog Whistler... I mean Whisperer.
Founder
Sotnik
First of all, claiming that the Klingons as a species are marginalized is fucking stupid when they control an interstellar empire and conquer the shit out of planets. Literally the only Klingon character who can claim to be marginalized in the TNG+ era is Worf, and that's because he got exiled from his own damn people's society twice for political bullshit. The Federation sure as fuck hasn't marginalized him and if he does show up in Picard S2, I wouldn't be surprised if he was commanding the Enterprise as per the prequel novel.

Second, Picard is privileged as fuck. Throughout the run of TNG and the TNG movies, he's gotten to dictate Federation foreign policy to a ridiculous degree, while being a huge ass hypocrite and doing more to help non-Federation citizens than actual Federation citizens. It's so fucking blatant that both Red Letter Media and SFDebris talk about his absurd flip-flop from obeying orders to relocate Indians due to a peace treaty with the Cardassians (who tortured him and already violated a previous treaty) and disobeying orders to help the Ba'ku.

He got used to being able to make the Federation his bitch with speeches heavy on moral rhetoric and not cold, pragmatic reasoning, and when his approach failed, he walked the fuck out because "pragmatism and competence equals evilthe Federation abandoning its principles," even though the Federation has committed far more egregious violations of its principles in the past. His moral absolutist stance fucked over tons of people, while he sat on his vineyard and sulked over how, in the wake of a war that fucked up a big part of the quadrant and required rebuilding parts of the Federation and the whole Cardassian Union, the Federation has zero reason to bend to his whims in order to save a race and government that has tried to fuck them over several times in the past twenty years.

Honestly Star Trek: Insurrection just seemed more contrived then usual. They really had to force Picard into a single path to save the Ba'ku like when Picard confronted Admiral Oldpudgyface or whatever his name was in the movie and the Admiral literally no-sold every counter Picard had in a single conversation and then the Admiral doubled down and was like... Oh I guess we gotta destroy the Enterprise meow... :rolleyes:

If I'm remembering the film correctly... I only saw it once.

What was the point of me writing this post again? :unsure:

Oh... yeah... I don't think that Picard cares more about other people then Federation citizens so to speak. I'm sure by action and encounter it might come out that way because he's very conciliatory and oftentimes when engaging with Federation politics it's often in a negative sense (the phase cloaking debacle, Captain Maxwell going vigilante on the Cardassians, the Maquis violating the treaty, and some other things I probably already forgot about) so it'll seem naturally slanted against the Federation. Plus he's an explorer and a diplomat so he's constantly doing stuff like encountering random colonies of genetic puritans to save from stellar phenomena or making contact with crazy aliens who speak in parable and metaphor or your aforementioned Cardassian interactions.

Plus there's still that thing with the Prime Directive, it got super cringey in the last season, but Picard's morality (or privilege) proved pretty strongly negative in some encounters, or could've or would've been in something circumstances like in The High Ground with the smart aliens and stupid aliens in union with each other or that episode where they were forced to meddle in Tasha Yar's rape homeworld affairs. :p

So TLDR, Insurrection was balls and we shouldn't derive anything about Star Trek's themes (at least for that era of Star Trek) from it.
 

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